Silicon Prairie Cyber Services' Blog

I thought it'd fun (and a little embarrassing) to share a story about the first time I testified in federal court for an FBI case. I had never been a courtroom before, and I really wasn’t into any of the shows that took place in one either. I didn’t really know what to expect. The Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) told me they’d call me into the courtroom, then I would be sworn in, and sit down in the witness stand. Sounds simple enough. Then once in the witness stand the fun would begin… They’d  ask me many questions about my background to get me brought in as an expert witness, I'd have to do a whole song and dance to see my notes when I didn’t recall the answer to something, and I'd have to speak to the jury like they have a 5 th  grade education (from the 1950s and know nothing about computers) with analogies aplenty. In this story, there’s a bad guy who did some nasty stuff to a woman and then tried to blackmail her. This how I remember the day... The ...

I don't know about you, but to me, summer means fun in the sun, lazy days, and ice cream. Summer also means  it's ransomware season . It seems cybercriminals look forward to this season as much as I look forward to ice cream. Have you been keeping up with what ransomware has been up to this summer? If not, here's what you missed... RANSOMWARE ATTACKS SINCE MAY 2021 "DarkSide  ransomware being used to disrupt a major U.S. pipeline that transports almost half of all fuel consumed on the East Coast of the United States The claimed theft of 3 terabytes of sensitive data from part of the Asian operations of a global insurance subsidiary in attacks using  Avaddon  ransomware The shutting down of the IT systems of Ireland’s Health Service Executive — another victim of a  DarkSide  attack — disrupting patient care throughout the country The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) alerting of a spate of  Conti  ransomware attacks targeting American hea...